Joe Posnanski, the longtime Kansas City Star columnist who’s now also writing for Sports Illustrated, has a nice column on his blog about cheating in baseball and historical context. It was sparked by a review of the new Willie Mays biography. I haven’t read the book, or the review. But I agree with Joe’s basic assumption: baseball has always had its share of cheaters and cranks, and overly romanticizing the game — and especially the numbers of bygone eras — probably isn’t healthy.
My main reasons for taking this view is purely self-serving as a modern fan of the game: l like baseball. I like watching baseball today, right now. If I believe baseball was so much better back in the day, or so much worse or more sinister now than it was then, I’m much less likely to simply be able to enjoy watching baseball. To that end, I really like Joe’s last line:
But when it comes down to it, I guess my big issue with Pete Hamill’s romantic essay is there never really was a long-ago time in America when there was a beautiful game called baseball. The game, for better and worse, is as beautiful now as it ever was.
I’m not terribly bent out of shape about Mark McGwire’s return to the Cardinals bench. What he did was wrong, but he wasn’t the only one. He apologized, as he should have. We condemned him for the past, as we should have. All we, and baseball as a whole, can do now is try to clean things up the best we can and then move forward. Admitting mistakes is part of that process. But acting overly pious doesn’t help much, in my opinion. Big Mac seems like he’s ready to take charge and do right by the organization. I’m ready to see what he can bring to the team.
